CO2 Storage

Geologic carbon sequestration is a technology for reducing CO­2 emissions to the atmosphere by injecting captured CO2 into deep subsurface formations. Investigations and field projects require large scale simulation of the flow during CO2 injection and in the equilibration stage after injection is completed. The flow in the post-injection stage is of low rates, gravity dominated and strongly influenced by capillary forces. In this regime, capillary heterogeneity is an important phenomenon leading to CO­2 trapping and contributing to the safe long term storage. This phenomenon is not completely understood and currently under investigation. Furthermore, numerical modeling of these types of flow are computationally expensive and methods such as upscaling are required for lowering simulation time.

We are interested in understanding basic mechanisms related to effective properties in flow with strong capillary heterogeneity and developing upscaling techniques for application in CO­2 storage numerical modeling.